At the Intersection of Faith and Culture

The Bane-stream Media, Second Amendment Denial, and Knife-Control

On Tuesday, April 9th, a man with a knife went on a rampage at Lone Star College near Houston, Texas.

Fourteen people were stabbed.

On Wednesday, April 10th, USA Today covered the attack, reassuring readers that knife attacks like these “are rare.”

Is it a stretch to think that USA Today, along with the left-leaning bane-stream media that it represents, has an interest invested in marginalizing this episode?

The question, clearly, is rhetorical. The bane-stream media, as everyone well knows, consists overwhelmingly of liberal partisans who have repeatedly revealed their commitment to advancing the Democratic Party’s agenda generally and so-called “gun control” specifically. These media partisans are well aware of the fact that stories like that coming out of Texas threaten to expose weaknesses in the narrative that they’ve co-authored with their fellow ideologues in Washington D.C.

According to this narrative, gun shootings of the kind that occurred in Newtown, Connecticut back in December are all too common in our gun-obsessed culture. Thus, at all costs, “we” must do what “we” can to insure that Newtown isn’t repeated. Translation: politicians must impose ever more stringent restrictions upon the Second Amendment.

Second translation: the federal government must assume even more power to wield over the citizenry (if that’s possible to imagine) as it gradually, through toddler steps, repeals Americans’ right to bear arms.

This is the truth of the matter. Yet the Second Amendment deniers are not interested in truth, for if they were, they wouldn’t be so intent upon concealing their inconsistencies.

For example, while it is indeed the case that mass knife attacks are rare, it is equally true that mass gun shootings are rare—a point that Second Amendment defenders have been making ad infinitum. The implications are obvious to all who would make the most meager of mental efforts.

The Second Amendment denier argues that anti-knife legislation to prevent mass knife attacks is unnecessary because such attacks are rare. But if this is so, then it follows that neither is anymore anti-gun legislation necessary, for mass gun attacks are no less rare than mass knife attacks.

If, as he is sure to do, the Second Amendment Denier maintains course, then consistency requires his support for “knife control.”

Both knives and guns are potentially dangerous. Both are used by the wicked and the deranged in mass attacks, however rare these may be. If it is true that guns kill, it is no less true that knives (to say nothing of all sorts of other things) kill as well.

So, why are the Second Amendment deniers not calling for knife-control? Why is this mass knife attack one crisis that they will letgo to waste?

Considering that the leftist has always styled himself its champion extraordinaire, it may come as a shock to hear that part of the answer to this question lies in the Second Amendment denier’s resentment toward equality. At any rate, there is a certain kind of equality that the Second Amendment encourages—but which he despises.

In all of world history there is no weapon ever conceived that has done more to put the most powerful and the weakest on an equal footing. The gun is the great equalizer. With a pistol in her hand, and without breaking a sweat, a frail, 90 year-old woman can send with lightning speed the strongest, most merciless young punk to the morgue.

Where there is this kind of equality in one’s ability to defend oneself, there is an equality of power. But when power is equally distributed, then no one is utterly dependent upon anyone else. Do you see where this is going? As the First Amendment prevents government—the biggest bully on the block—from attaining a monopoly on speech, so does the Second Amendment prevent it from attaining a monopoly on self-defensive force.

To put it succinctly, because guns supply everyone, the weak no less than the strong, with easy means to defend themselves, an armed citizenry remains the largest obstacle to the formation of a tyrannical government.

This is why there won’t be any calls for knife-control.

And it is this that explains why calls for “gun-control” will continue.

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At the Intersection of Faith and Culture

by Jack Kerwick

Regardless of one's views on religion, there is no escaping the fact that Western civilization is unintelligible in the absence of it -- of Christianity specifically. Indeed, even the secular ideologies of our generation derive their identity from the Christianity to which they are opposed. Culture and religion intersect in numerous ways. Through this blog, I explore the intricate relationship between them.